This essay is part of the Between Chapters project, inspired by the book. What chapters are you between? How did you get from one chapter to another? Share your story here.
What Chapter Are You…
Leaving:
Planning and testing out a retirement life here and in Italy.
In:
The chapter where the manuscript gets dropped on the floor and all the chapters get mixed up.
Entering:
Returning to parenting a teenager and grieving a loss.
Even when my daughter Annie had become so thin and weak that waking up in the morning exhausted her, I still held out hope that we would find a way to give her more time.
After she died, and I looked back on those days, it made sense in some impossible way that she had. Her body was under attack from the inside out. What began as breast cancer spread after her bilateral mastectomy, finding its way into her liver, chest wall, and skin. She was relentless in her search for trials, medications, doctors, and programs that might treat the Stage 4 cancer invading her body. She tried everything that sounded helpful and contacted anyone who might be able to help. Through it all, right up to her very last day, she showed up as a mom, wife, sister, and, so meaningfully to me, a daughter.
The time of life when I imagined handing some family responsibilities to my eldest child, my daughter, looks very different now. The days of downsizing and passing along heirlooms and treasured mementos to the next generation came to an abrupt end. Not that Annie would have wanted my old china or the photo albums stacked in the bookcase. She had her own treasured keepsakes, some of which are in the new house her husband and son moved into about six months after her death. Others have been given away or stored in crates in the basement of a home she never set foot in.
Imagining myself as an old woman also looks very different now. It hit me only recently, through one random, tiny thought: “I thought Annie was going to be the one who plucked my stray chin hairs when I was old.” That thought opened a whole new vision of my future, like a door swinging open onto a landscape I had not yet allowed myself to see. I had been so busy grieving the day-to-day absence of her from my life that I had not considered my future without her.
In some ways, of course, I had, especially when I thought of her 12-year-old son and how he would manage without his mom. As the months turned into years, and he became a teenager with all the milestones that stage of life brings, it was hard not to think that Annie should have been there for the first conversation about the new girlfriend or how to handle being sent to detention for bullying. Which was a misunderstanding, of course. She raised him better than that. He has become such a thoughtful, funny, and smart young man that it’s hard for my eyes not to well up when he calls me to share an academic accomplishment or a victory on the soccer field. She should be here for this.
And then, one day, I realized she should be here for me, too.
She already had been, in so many ways. When she died, I posted the news on social media and called her my north star. But she was that and so many other things. My better half. My best friend. A trusted confidante. I was 22 years old when she was born, with a husband who worked 15 hours a day and no close friends with children yet, and we were joined at the hip. In her first four years, we moved from Texas to Georgia to South Carolina, back to Texas, and then to Connecticut, where her little brother came along. Soon after, I divorced their dad and stayed in the same small town, in a tiny apartment near the town green.
Annie became my go-to helper, even as I tried to limit those responsibilities and let her just be a kid. But that’s the kind of daughter she was. And that’s the kind of person she grew into: a helpful, thoughtful friend whose acceptance of people was unconditional, and who never left a soul feeling unseen or unheard.
That is one of grief’s cruel surprises. Just when you think you have anticipated all of its parts, there are always more. I think it’s because the brain cannot handle it all at once. How could I possibly have made it through those first few hours, days, and weeks if I also had to mourn my future without Annie? I could barely conceive of missing her the next day. Who would I call? Who would I text? Who would I send that funny Instagram reel to? How could I go to our cottage in Maine without her? Who would take care of it when I was gone if I could not hand the reins to Annie’s competent hands?
It is a chapter I never saw coming, one that took the place of the chapter that was ripped out, its ragged edges still visible in the crease of the book. The part where she would become my helper again, even if I didn’t want her to be. She would have a spreadsheet for my medications and doctors. She would admonish me for not getting enough exercise or having another glass of wine. She would send her son over to mow the lawn and make sure to come over at least once a week for dinner. She would bring me sweet treats, and we would still have our movie-night sleepovers.
And she would pluck my stray chin hairs.
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Beautifully written, dear Cindy, and so close to my heart as I grieve over the death of my daughter-in-love. Thank you for this.
Deeply moving…and felt, too…the future we thought we’d have with our child. I think you’re right, we have too much to carry when they first go, to even consider what the future without them looks like. I’m glad you wrote this Cindy, it will help others understand better how many individual sadnesses exist within the loss of our precious child 🙏❤️